04.11.03
Great excitement at Ansible HQ when Gollancz sent a Philip K.
Dick novel unknown to me! Was Cantata-140 a lost MS belatedly
discovered in some attic? No, alas, it's just a retitling of a old book
whose first half had appeared in F&SF as 'Cantata 140'.
Perhaps the Gollancz people were nervous of so much as hinting at any
possible association of Dick with drug culture by retaining his 1966 title
-- not mentioned even on the copyright page The Crack in Space.
Bram Stoker Awards. A few categories from the copious
shortlists:
NOVEL
Douglas Clegg, The Hour Before Dark
Stephen King, From a Buick 8
Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby
Tom Piccirilli, The Night Class
Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
FIRST NOVEL
Tina Jens, The Blues Ain't Nothin'
Michael Laimo, Atmosphere
Scott Nicholson, The Red Church
Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
FOR YOUNG READERS
Clive Barker, Abarat
Nancy Etchemendy, Cat in Glass and Other Tales of the Unnatural
Neil Gaiman, Coraline
Richard Matheson and William Stout, Abu & The Seven Marvels
As a contributor, I was also pleased to see Richard Bleiler's epic
two-volume Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy and
Horror on the nonfiction shortlist. More information at
http://www.horror.org; winners to be
announced in June.
As Others See Us. Once again, burblings from a promotional press
pack: `
'In fact, it is this very unknown aspect of the film's subject that
makes The Core not just another science fiction movie. Says
producer David Foster: "We've seen sea adventures and space odysseys,
but traveling into the core of the earth is largely unexplored terrority."'
Which, as our informant Dan Kimmel notes, will no doubt come as a great
surprise to the adapters of Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth
and Burroughs's At the Earth's Core....
R.I.P. John Foyster (1941-2002), legendary Australian
fan, critic, publisher, witty curmudgeon and (in real life) statistician,
died on 5 April after prolonged but unsuccessful treatment for an
inoperable brain tumour diagnosed towards the end of 2001. He was 61. His
partner Yvonne Rousseau writes: 'It is a great blessing that he died
without ever experiencing great pain from the cancer, and that he died
very peacefully: simply failing to take the next breath.'
J.K. Rowling and Time Warner won their Amsterdam lawsuit
blocking publication of Dmitry Yemets's 'Tanya Grotter' rip-off (eight
books planned, 500,000 copies sold in Russia) -- although Yemets and his
Dutch publisher Byblos can appeal.
See
BBC coverage.
David A. Hardy isn't the only sf/space artist whose name adorns
an asteroid: astronomer Dr James Scotti named a whole batch from a list
including Kim Poor, Don Davis, Chris Butler, Bob Eggleton and Alan Bean,
with more to come.
London Pub Meetings (first Thursday evening each month) are
again in upheaval after problems too tedious to relate at the April
gathering. See www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/Ansible/london.html
for more than you wished to know.
Thog's Masterclass. Dept of Doing It The Hard Way.
'Xavier closed his eyes, then forced himself to watch the terrible
solution.' (Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson, Legends of Dune:
The Butlerian Jihad, 2002)
David Langford is an author and a gentleman.
His newsletter, Ansible,
is the essential SF-insider sourcebook of wit and incongruity. He lives in Reading, England with his wife Hazel, 25,000 books, and a few dozen Hugo awards. He continues to add books and Hugos.
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